Knowing Too Much Yet Not Enough

You’re all so sweet. Thank you for your continued cheers and good wishes. I feel since you’ve weathered my weird symptoms you deserve to be as much in the fog as I am.

The blood test results are coming back. Most of them came in on Saturday. One of the great things about Kaiser is that their labs are open 24/7 so lab results are speedy.

The other cool thing is they send you an email, you log into your account and there are the results. Complete with what a “normal” range is and what the test is testing for.

I was feeling pretty great because all the tests that came back on Saturday (for thyroid, diabetes, etc) were completely normal.

Then my email pinged this morning. There was another result. For a test I hadn’t had before. One that tests thyroid antibody levels.The *normal* range for this test is less than 35 IU/ml.

My result? Eight hundred and three. 803!

UPDATE: I talked with doctor friend of mine last night and it turns out that this test result is normal for someone with Hashimoto’s Disease – the type of thyroid disease that I have. The fact that I have this disease is not new but I wasn’t aware of this particular test. So basically, all is *relatively* well. Whew.

Immediately I launched into a Google search to try to understand what the heck it meant because mysteriously Kaiser did not explain this test in the place that they always have a little write-up.

I’m here to say that there is such a thing as too much information (access to this test result) and then wading into the world medical speak on the web. All I did was scare myself.

I’m meeting with a neurologist on Thursday and am hopeful he can shed some light.

In other news I have my Valium prescription and am armed and ready to confront the evil MRI machine. But that will be after the Doctor appointment.

A friend told me that Ativan is a better choice. Can you folks with any experience of these drugs weigh in and let me know the differences?